Two Ways to View Performance Based Marketing

You’re paying an agency to perform, right? Underscore, “perform.”

You can look at Performance Based in one of two ways:

Perspective #1: If you don’t get the leads you want you don’t have to pay the agency. Wow, great, right? Thus, you don’t get the leads and the agency doesn’t get paid—so you and the agency can both go out of business together. Not a happy thought. And not what you should be looking for.Perspective #2: The agency makes you incredibly successful and you’re delighted to pay them for their amazing performance—because now, instead of making $20K per month, you’re making $50K—just for example.

Isn’t it better to plan on hitting or exceeding your revenue goals rather than worrying if you’re going to go out of business? We’re so adamant about hitting goals we refuse to take on a new client unless we’re 100% confident we can hit or exceed them. This requires a process of learning about your business; our first call with you won't be a "sales call."

“Paying for Leads?”

Some think PB marketing is “paying for leads” or “buying leads,” it’s not. DO NOT enter into any deal where you simply are buying leads. If that is what you’ve been thinking, you need to talk to an owner of an insurance or real estate business—and let them cry on your shoulder as they tell you about how they’ve paid thousands of dollars for “junk” Internet leads that have resulted in horrible close ratios and time wasted with tire-kickers.

“Buying leads” is the biggest Internet rip-off to date. Stop and think about this: Ask yourself, “where the heck is some agency going to get these leads in the first place?” There is your answer.

Performance Based and Your Success

Stop aiming so low! You first need to define “success” as getting the results you want—not just getting “some” results. Anybody can get you “some” results; very few can get you the results you want.

Tired of agencies who promise to get you “some” leads? There are zillions of these so-called agencies.

In marketing, sales, business growth, scaling, quarterly targets, etc., the term “successful” is entirely subjective. We measure success when we achieve or exceed your goals.

We think “success” is not just getting a few results, it's getting the results YOU want.

Ad Spend vs. Results

Many marketers, even huge multi-national companies, focus on ad spend first, then they take those dollars and throw them where they think they’ll stick. Your ad budget is important and the dollars you toss at marketing are important. But if you are hyper-focused on ad spend first, “what’s it going to cost?” - you likely will sticker-shock yourself out of doing anything that will achieve your goals. Test-spending $100 on FB ads to see if they work is not a good test.

If, however, your passion is achieving your dream, three things are likely to happen:

You will get more your results.

You will spend money to get there.

You will get better ROI, your company will grow and, as it does, the cycle will continue: You’ll spend even more money, and see even better results.

The 'Secret Sauce' of Why You Need to Pay an Agency

Everybody wants a deal, right? Here's the deal: If you get a "good deal" from some agency, it's not going to be sustainable. Can't be. Either the bargain agency will lose their freelancers or out-sourced agencies or the work isn’t up to par leaving you with *guess what* out in the cold, having spent money with little or nothing to show for it.

This is a common faux pas in the industry as "super bargain" rates are so common, but so unsustainable. They are the result in the limitless horror stories you'll read on the Internet under headings such as, "Why FB doesn't work."

Unfortunately, more than 50% of the companies who come to us already have been down this route and are poorer as a result. We're trying to spare you the pain.

The All-Important Sales Funnel

The only way—not just “a way” but the only way Performance Based marketing works is by having a stellar sales funnel, custom created for your business, your audience, your products or services, and your goals.

The money you spend on building a good sales funnel often is the most important investment you’ll ever make in marketing. (BTW: Are you reading this? You are at the very, very top of one of our sales funnels right now.)

According to Harvard Business Review, how (or where) visitors enter and exit the sales funnel has changed, especially in the wake of social media. Nevertheless, a funnel still is the most important digital marketing process and often having one is the only way you will acquire new leads.

Sales funnels vary in structure according to channel. An inbound funnel, for example, looks very different than a Facebook™ ads funnel.

Depending on the digital marketing channel or, more accurately, the newness of the digital channel, a good sales funnel will make you tons of money and a bad one will cost you tons of money.

Newness of the channel impacts build cost. New processes are often much more complicated and if they’re still evolving (as digital marketing should evolve), cost will be higher for the newer, and more often better producing, channel.

For example, the oldest channel, the humble website, funnels (and websites) may be cheap or free, and still produce something. Inbound marketing, which leverages website content, is not free. A good inbound funnel build may cost thousands of dollars or many hours of internals staff’s time to build initially.

The newest and hottest marketing channel, Facebook™ Performance ads, a top-tier funnel (think the agency Gary V hires) can be the highest valued commodity in your business—priceless for the new revenue it will deliver to you.

"...the most efficient marketing is not necessarily the cheapest. "The Super Bowl commercial is the best deal in marketing. Like, not even close. At $6 million a pop, a steal!" A good Superbowl commercial is worth between $20 and $40 million...

We are paying $6 to $13 CPM [cost per thousand impressions] on Facebook right now that are going to be $50 to $80 in 36 and 48 months and everybody is going to be sad that they didn't jump on it... [source: Gary Vanerchuk]

A fully working, validated, FB ads funnel is exceptionally complicated to build, there are so many variables and so much research that goes into the process.

While you may be able to DIY a website or inbound marketing, of the hundreds of funnels we’ve analyzed, we’ve not yet seen a Facebook™ DIY funnel that anyone is happy with.

Conclusion

Digital marketing is complicated if it's going to produce. We take a wholistic look at everything, website, branding, messaging, product to market value, margins, ad spend, channels, viability of current channels, website analytics, social messaging, and finally, if you have and what you have in place for lead-generation.

Beware of agencies who say, “we can get you everything for a cheap price.” If, early in the conversation they’re throwing out price, the agency has fallen into the same mindset trap you risk falling into. Best to focus on goals and results first and plan on getting the ROI you want.

Lastly, there is no rubber stamping or cloning here. You cannot go online, buy or download some funnel and get it to work well for your business. Nor is there any online course that will do it all for you, and some courses cost $10K or more. Marketing today is a science. The best digital marketing results will come from research and metrics and applying them to your business.

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Our primary concern is helping you achieve your marketing and sales goals. If you buy without knowing the value you're getting, and are not totally delighted, we know you're going to cut and run at your earliest opportunity.

Helping clients to get leads, convert them into customers, and streamline their sales processes always has been our primary passion. We excel by being able to deliver marketing strategies and initiatives that help your company grow and save costs by producing positive marketing ROI.